1Hundred

and i keep crawling

on my knees to see

what the holy told me

they could always see,

and in my stretched arms

i found broken bits of air,

when in theirs i saw rosaries.

but could you live 

with having to look

behind your back 

all the time? 

you would turn around

and listen to the voices

whispering your name

behind you,

and before you can blink 

your eyes or call out 

to your god, you’re falling on the floor, unbreathing, undead.

and in my basket here, i’ve collected the moments from my lifetime,

and once upon ago, we built our walls

with apples and spoons and the night

kept slipping away, like the silk it always was. 

so i’ve made a lifetime out of crawling on all fours,

with maggots to find hell and make it do my bidding – -

there are no fires that rage

to make the skin burn, you know – the cold kills just as well. 

and so what? and so what if i

wanted to live in my fog,

floating away on marshes?

the feet that were soiled were still just mine. 

who shall i be when i’m not myself

and i’m not in my place anymore? will laughter abound?

will food be aplenty? will i wake in the middle of the night

to the sound of the water dripping?

where will my feet take me, because my life stopped

being a road for me and the bricks turned to ashes?

where will i live because the emerald city

turned out to be covered in black soot,

with spires reaching into a swirling

Lyttonian sky etched by the brush strokes

that would have been a masterpiece?

in the drying light of tomorrow’s waking,

how will i diminish the storm within myself?

away from your door

my footsteps lead me away

and turn to wood, only

to bring me back to you.

i place letter after letter together to form words to lay at your feet,

like flowers, like new marigolds blooming to life,

sometimes like the scent of sandalwood snaking

through the rooms in front of oil lamps,

to hear the notes of music rise and sing 

and rain down to seep

into my roots

to string my love for you, again.

when mirrors come crashing down

they take parts of me with them; either 

a hand in the tip of a glass, or my feet

led astray under the grand piano, or my heart

trapped in the sway of the chandelier; and often

just my face lying of the floor, beneath me,

on shards of glass that were left behind.

i took a walk into the mountains, once,

past the cherry blossoms, into a river

flowing south, trying to bounce its way

over pebbles and boulders, trying to flow away

from the Buddha of yesteryears, to speak again

of greater loves that would have been able

to find their ways through a maze, but went

around in circles through my heart

and cold nights when the fires

would refuse to live on;

when my feet turned to lead.

i left my eyes wide open

because i couldn’t listen

with them closed shut

to the sounds that wanted

me to come out and play

with the jittery june bugs

in the middle of the night

before you and i would have

wrapped our arms around each

other. it was the night, i know.

it was the night coming to play

with a deep, rasping breath,

as it always did before we found

the will to lay and fall asleep.

some days are made

just with hours

that i spend digging through

mounds of dirt, like clumps

of silk, for stories that never

found a way out.

 i remember shadows walking

under a summer sun,

faces turned away

longing for the warmth

of winter rays –

shadows don’t always

shimmer in ripples

the water leaves behind

– and shadows in the shade

don’t always touch each other

before they meld into one

cloud trying to hide fingers

intertwined under reflections

of protruding leaves